China-Tibet-Olympics: Medals for highest-pitched rhetoric?

The way the debate about the forthcoming Olympic Games in China has been going, maybe the International Olympic Committee‘s poobahs should start thinking about awarding medals for the highest-pitched rhetoric, the most audacious public-relations efforts, the most creative protest-sign-making or the most over-the-top propaganda pronouncements. Consider these developments:

April 2, 2008: Some anti-China, pro-Tibet protesters outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels carried signs whose graphics made creative use of the Olympic rings logo

» File under “Be Careful What You Wish For”: In reaction to criticism from overseas of its human-rights record, especially with regard to Tibet, the communist government of China and the country’s state-controlled news media have appealed to a spirit of nationalism, not so subtly suggesting that Chinese national pride has been wounded by the comments of foreign detractors.

Now, however, Reuters reports, “Chinese official media have sought to temper nationalist calls for boycotts of foreign businesses accused of supporting Tibetan independence, urging angry citizens to focus on economic development. Chinese Internet sites have been awash with calls to stop buying French-made goods and to stop shopping at Carrefour stores [French-owned supermarkets] after Tibet protesters in Paris [recently] disrupted the Beijing Olympics torch relay.” In “a sign that the Chinese government may want to cool public anger over Tibet and the Olympics protests, the official Xinhua [news] agency [has] called for ‘patriotic zeal to concentrate on development.’” The news service, appealing to its Chinese audience, stated: “Patriotic zeal must enter onto a rational track and must be transformed into concrete actions to do one’s own work well….Thirty years of reform and opening up have created a China miracle….Our tasks in accelerating domestic development are extremely heavy….We must convert full-hearted patriotic zeal into patriotic action.”

March 28, 2008: A Tibetan woman dressed in traditional Qiang minority garments in her home in a village located 124 miles north of Mianyang, in China’s Sichuan province; Reuters reports: “Across China’s mountainous west, armed troops watch over the Tibetan monasteries and towns that have emerged as hotbeds of protest kindled by traditions of defiance and newer economic grievances.”

» File under “Two Can Play at That Game”: Boycotts, nos amis? A separate Reuters report notes that two of China’s hottest contemporary artists, Wang Guangyi and Lu Hao, both of whom have won important, price-boosting praise for their work from foreign art critics, have decided to withdraw their creations from an exhibition that is set to open in France in June in “the latest display of anger at the country after protesters in Paris disrupted Beijing’s Olympic torch relay.” Wang noted that the calls some French citizens had made for their country to boycott the Beijing Olympics that are scheduled to begin in early August “made me feel very annoyed, so we thought that…attending the exhibition would be unhappy and decided not to go.” Reuters reports that both Wang and Lu “stressed that their decision [to pull out of the forthcoming art exhibition] was personal, with Wang adding he had great respect for French culture and would not rule out future cooperation” with art presenters in France.

» File under “Endurance Test”: In India, the Economic Times reports that, with “international criticism rising over the Tibetan issue, and world leaders announcing plans to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, China has stepped up its propaganda machine. Beijing has turned to ‘history’ to counter the growing chorus of support for Tibetans.” Now, the newspaper notes, China’s embassy in India “has been busy sending out a DVD entitled ‘Tibet in the Past,’ a documentary produced by the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio of China. The blurb on [its] cover says that the DVD contains a series of documentaries shot before 1960 [that run some] 900 minutes.” The DVD’s packaging announces that the material it contains “recreates social conditions in Tibet and [the] lives of ordinary Tibetans before 1959.” The Economic Times reports: “The DVD covers a period of China’s history that culminates in the flight of the Dalai Lama to India in 1959 after the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. China has maintained that the 1959 uprising was the work of aristocrats who wanted to restore oppression of the Tibetan masses who were freed by the Chinese.”

June 20, 2007: Computer users at an Internet café in northern China; in the People’s Republic, the government still prohibits Internet surfers’ access to politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests

» File under “Gold Medal for Bombast”(?): Rob Anders, a member of Canada’s national parliament representing his country’s Conservative Party, is planning to travel to Ann Arbor, Michigan, today to meet the Dalai Lama. In recent days, the exiled, Tibetan-Buddhist spiritual leader and head of the Tibetan government in exile has been on a tour of the U.S.

Representing a Calgary constituency, Anders, notes Canada’s Canwest News Service, “is an outspoken critic of China and a member of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, an all-party group formed in 1990 by members of Parliament and senators concerned about the political situation in Tibet.” Yesterday, Canwest reports, Anders said: “I want to go and talk to the Dalai Lama…Partly, by doing so, I think we’re highlighting the issue, but, as well, I want to ask him about the cultural genocide that is going on there.” The news agency notes that Anders “compared this year’s Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Games held in Berlin, when Germany was under Nazi rule, arguing that China is the wrong choice to host the Games.” Anders said: “I absolutely, 100% think it compares to the Berlin Olympics in 1936….You’ve got Falun Gong practitioners, which [sic] are not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Adolf Hitler had issues with Jews being able to participate in the Olympics in 1936.”

In his comments yesterday, Anders, who several years ago “crashed a Chinese New Year’s event on Parliament Hill [, in Ottawa,] wearing a ‘Free Tibet’ T-shirt,” also referred to China as “the worst human-rights violator in the world right now,” adding: “I think their record in terms of deaths and atrocities far overshadows those in the Second World War. If you look at the people who were killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution under Mao, it makes the deaths on the Russian front in the Second World War look small in comparison.” Canwest points out that Anders “stopped short…of calling for an outright boycott of the Olympics, but he did say no Canadian politician should attend the Games, nor should any Canadian athletes be used as ‘propaganda tools.’” The conservative pol stated: “I’m sensitive to the fact that we’ve had [sic] Canadian athletes…who have trained for years….They’re good athletes; they want to have the opportunity to compete. But I don’t want to see them used as a propaganda tool for the Chinese communists.” (Canwest News Service; see also CBC News)